Wars were boiling up all over the world, and talk of war was every place. It was time, I felt, we went home. Mike Murder, my director, and I were making newsreel shots, but something called television was driving people out of the popcorn palaces that showed movies, so business was not so good.
We were making it home in easy stages, and the morning we got off the plane in Australia, Mike looked over the place and said, “Chum, it looks like Pasadena after a season of no rain.”
“Be nice to the people, Mike, they like it here.”
“I guess you ain't never been to Pasadena.”
“Nonsense, some of my best friends used to live in Pasadena.”
“What do they eat here?” Mike asked; he is a simple man with a double stomach and a way of finding things to fill it.
We had a morning tea, something yon find in countries where there are enough English to fly the flag and the tea bag. Porridge, fried steak, tea, and toast with marmalade and honey followed. Brownies are served, made of a bread dough in which brown sugar and currants are mixed. I don't know any other place in the world where they make them that way.
After breakfast we went to the local newspaper and discovered a society wedding was on for the day and went out with our camera to take pictures of the event. It was very plush; the best people had left off shark-fishing and sheep-herding, and a man who was said to be Noel Coward (and wasn't) was there running the thing.
I found the bride's mother, a very handsome woman, seated at the tea table on the lawn behind half a foot of cigarette holder. I asked her if she minded if we shot some of her guests.
“If you start with the bridegroom's mother, it's all right with me.”
“I mean with a movie camera.”
“Oh, the cinema.”
“It's been called that.”
She smiled at me, poured me some tea, and relit her cigarette. We had a long talk about the world. “It's so far from everything here,” she said, “and now my little girl is getting married, and I shall live here all alone.”
“We do like to get pictures of how life is lived out here.”
She laughed. “Really, you know this place is a copy of a house in England. If you want to see real Australia, why don't you go inside?”
“Inside?”
“I mean inside the country. I've got a station—you call them ranches, I believe—about a thousand miles inland. I'll give you a letter, and you can film sheep till you bahbhh.”
Mrs. Inchcliff, as I shall call her, laughed again, and I suspected she had been having more than tea. I said fine, I would call for the letter, and I went off to help film the wedding. Personally, I think the groom married the wrong lady; I would have picked Mrs. Inchcliff. She seemed very charming once you got behind her cigarette holder.
The food was very good. Whole lambs and chickens and the specials of the country. A fine spiced Kolendo sausage, caramel bananas, parsnip-and-walnut croquettes, and the whole range of fruits we never see in this country, papaw, and others. Rabbit baked in cream and all kinds of kidney dishes that most Americans wouldn't touch but which are very tasty.
I found Mike stuffing himself on rabbit and joined him. In Australia, there are more rabbits every minute, and they catch them by the millions. In self-defense they've learned how to cook them well. Baked rabbit in cream is easy to make. After half a dozen rabbits are cleaned and washed, cut them into sections. Boil them in water to which has been added bay leaf, black pepper, and onion. When the meat is soft, remove the pieces and cook down the stock to about a quart Salt and pepper each piece of meat very well. Put them in a bread-crumbed clay baking pot and wind some bacon strips around the rabbit bits. Keep piling up the rabbit and bread crumbs until the pot is filled. Slice some onions very finely over this. Mix the stock with half milk and half cream and pour it into the dish. In Australia this is baked in an open-air oven at about 370 degrees. When the bread crumbs are a deep brown, serve the rabbit in its baking dish.
I can't say much for the native wines. But Mrs. Inchcliff brought up some of her imported stock, and we toasted the bride and her mother and promised to come back and show her our pictures, from upcountry.
Mike wasn't so sure he wanted to go. “I hate sheep and I like dames.”
“You can take along your comic books. Anyway, they have three million people here and they must reproduce in some way. I'm sure they have girls on the stations.”
“I'm going to hate it,” Mike said.
We started by bus from Sydney and went to Canberra, which was dusty and not too busy. Then by more bus we got into the real inside of New South Wales and traveled for days. “There isn't much in Australia,” Mike used to say, “but there is a lot of it.” Somewhere near Lake Eyre Mrs. Inchcliff had her station. But nobody knew just where. They pointed to the next dust cloud and said, “It's in there somewheres, chap, right ahead, in there someplice.”
So we kept going. We met many a swagman, a kind of native hobo who walks the roads, carrying nothing but a blanket and tin can. He eats what he can find and cooks up his tea in his tin can, called a billy can there. Tea leaves, brown sugar, and the whole mess stirred with what is handy, and when you drink with him, you hope he'll only use a eucalyptus twig. “The eucalyptus and the rabbit,” Mike said, “are slowly driving people out of Australia.”
One night we camped with a group of natives, not English natives but the black people who were here a million years ago. They smell high, live easy, and don't seem to give a damn. Mike, who was always hungry, decided to get into their cooking pots.
He pointed to a pot. “What that there, boy?” (Mike can speak any language.)
“Him ants and grasshopper. Very much good.”
“I pass. What's that?”
“Parlja.”
“I'll have a dime's worth.”
I watched him eat a mess off a big green leaf, very hot.
“How is it?” I asked.
“Not bad. What him in here, boy?”
“Come from eucalyptus tree.”
“Tastes like meat to me.”
“Him little white grub.”
Mike turned green, and I found out parlja is a tree larva, much loved by the natives. We didn't taste any native food after that. Some natives were dirt eaters, partial to a fatty clay; some were snake eaters, a habit I once found very popular on Park Avenue, New York. But I doubt whether New Yorkers are true snake-meat gourmets, for in Australia the snake livers are the caviar of the people. The ranchers eat a lot of scalloped mutton brain, and a sheep brain savory is ready for you at any ranchhouse.
We reached Station Inchcliff tired, worn, and sure the country was the biggest and emptiest on earth, unless you count sheep as people. The ranchhouse was built of stone with a straw roof, and two hundred men worked the place, though mast of them were out in the bush following sheep. A sheep can't be led, but it can be followed. A Mr. Rollo was manager of the station, and he offered us the brandy of the new country and the Scotch of the old country. He took us into a big living room, the walls hung with guns and animal heads.
“I say,” he said. “This Hopalong Gassidy. Some chap, what?”
“Nice guy,” said Mike, relaxing around bis Scotch. “Worked with him in the old days. Never knew he'd hit big time.”
Rollo's eyes hung out on stems. “You don't mean you've actually met Hoppy!”
“Sure, why?”
“Met Hoppy! We run his pictures every night here in the sheep-dipping yard.”
“Hoppy's a cowman himself,” I said.
“How many old Hoppy films have you got?” Mike asked.
“Only one, but we never tire of it. The hands all feel in some way a kinship to the chap.”
“He's pretty popular back home now. Television.”
“Heard of the blasted thing.” said Rollo. “But you must see our Hoppy film tonight.”
“Be glad to,” said Mike, reaching for the Scotch. “Cement friendship between two great countries. Yep.”
“Yep,” I said, taking the Scotch away from him. We were shooting a sheep-clipping in the morning.
We saw the Hoppy film that night. We saw it again the night after that. The next day was Sunday, so we saw it twice, once after lunch. After a week of this, Mike and I were kind of tired of the film, but Rollo and the boys looked hurt if we tried to say we wanted to miss a showing. They looked real mean when we said we had headaches. We didn't miss a showing.
One day Mike caught me behind the dog houses. “Listen, chum, you notice any signs I'm going mad?”
“Not more than the usual ones, Hoppy, I mean Mike.”
“I asked for soda pop this morning, just like Hoppy does.”
“I think we better get out of here.”
“All right, pack the gear.”
I told Rollo we were leaving, and he seemed sad. “Kind of been swanking it around here. Personal friends of Hoppy living with us. Can't you just stay one more week?”
“Sorry, have to catch a boat.”
“Why not just stay tonight? Make a real beano of it—show the Hoppy film and break open the ale.”
Mike closed his eyes and stabbed his mutton. I said we were sorry. The next day we took the bus for the coast. It was a long, tiring drive. We developed the film and one night we ran it off for Mrs. Inchcliff. She was very pleased with it all and said the little lambs looked real cute.
“Rollo has been happy to have you visit the Station. He sent me a long wire yesterday, wishes you were back.”
“Rollo is a fine man. You're lucky to have him.”
“I must ride out there this fall and see how the place is going.”
“To Hoppy,” said Mike.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Mrs. Inchcliff. loading her cigarette holder.
“Native American slang.” I explained.
We got our film on the boat and went down to the lobster stands and had a native girl broil a few for us. They are very cheap there, and kids eat them instead of Good Humors.
We were packing to leave when the hotel clerk said I was wanted on the telephone. It was Mrs. Inchcliff.
“There is trouble on the station. The men are leaving. The power plant has broken down. But they're big grown men, they can go to bed in the dark. Did you notice any trouble while you were there? I have a feeling Rollo is slipping.”
“No. Mrs. Inchliff,” I said. “It isn't Rollo. It's Hoppy. Take my advice and fly up a new power plant man, and your troubles will be over. They can't see the film if there is no power.”
“I don't understand?”
“Just get the plant fixed, and do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Ship them some new Hoppy films. I think the sheep dogs are going mad looking at the old film.”
“I wouldn't want anything to happen to the dogs,” she said. But she hung up quickly as if I had been touched in the head myself by my trip out to the station …
Hoppy, the world is yours!